Managing Your Diskspace Quota

A "byte" is equivalent to one character of storage. A disk block is 1024 bytes (characters), commonly called 1K. A megabyte (MB) is 1024 disk blocks (1,048,576 bytes or characters, or 1024K). Unless you've purchased additional diskspace, you either have a diskspace allotment of 1Mb (Basic Plan) or 5Mb (20/20 Plan) with your World account. If you'd like to download files that are larger than your diskspace allotment, or generally want to maximize the diskspace that you have, the following solutions may be of help to you.

First, to assess exactly how much diskspace your account comes with, use the quota command with the -v option. This command displays your disk ``usage'', ``quota'', ``limit'' and ``timeleft'' among other things. Your ``usage'' defines the amount of diskspace your files cur- rently occupy. Your ``quota'' defines your total alloted diskspace which you can exceed slightly. However, you will receive warning messages until you reduce your diskspace ``usage'' to below your ``quota''. Your ``limit'' defines the maximum allotment of diskspace you can use, but it cannot be exceeded. When you have reached your ``limit'', you will be unable to create new files. Your ``timeleft'' defines the number of days you have to reduce your diskspace ``usage'.

For example:
world% quota -v
Disk quotas for freduser (uid 1000):
Filesystem usage quota limit timeleft files quota limit timeleft
/home/ie 154 1024 1536 28 0 0

Next, to assess the size of your files, use the du -kas command. This command reports the number of blocks(1 block = 512 bytes) contained in all files and subdirectories in your home directory.

For example:
world% du -kas
1 ./.cshrc
1 ./.login
227 ./.newsrc
0 ./mail/sent-mail
0 ./mail/saved-messages
9 ./my.schedule
23 ./program.txt
135 ./booklist
402 /home/casa/login_name

If you have numerous files and subdirectories, this command will give you many pages of output. To manage the output of this command so that you can review it more easily, direct it to the more program.

For example:
world% du -kas | more

The command ls -asR lists all of your files, including ``.'' files (-a) and their size (-s), in a recursive (-R) listing through all of your subdirectories. Use this command to help identify those files that are causing you to exceed your disk quota, and that need to be removed.

For example:

world%  ls -asR
total 967
 1 .               1 .login        16 .pinerc      1 News
31 ..              1 .msgsrc        1 .tin         1 humor
 2 .cshrc        478 .newsrc        1 Mail         1 mail

./.tin:
total 430
 1 .              1 .index       414 active         0 posted
 1 ..             1 .mailidx       2 attributes    10 tinrc

./mail:
total 2
 1 .                  0 saved-messages
 1 ..                 0 sent-mail

Files to watch for
Many of The World's customers who experience quota problems discover that a few errant files are the source of their usage problems. The most commonly troublesome files include any number of the following:

 .newsrc.bak 
 .oldnewsrc

The .newsrc.bak file is generated when you use the nn USENET utility. The .oldnewsrc file is generated when you use either the tin, trn, or nn USENET utilities. These are simply backup copies of your .newsrc file, a very large file that is read each time you access USENET. These backup files can be safely removed. In the event that you need to recover these files after removal, please contact Customer Support.

 read-messages
 saved-messages
 sent-mail
 sent-mail-apr-1995

Pine creates a variety of files (also known as folders) to keep track of your read, saved and sent mail messages. Each month Pine reorganizes these files by renaming them with the name of the month the messages were processed. Sometimes one or more of these mail folders may become overly large and can be removed or whittled down if you find that their presence in your account is causing quota problems.

Finally, it is always possible that you may, at some point, unwittingly download a large file from your USENET, gopher or World Wide Web utility that will increase your disk usage to its limit. Generally, it is helpful to get into the habit of running the ls command to help you ensure that the files in your home directory are current and useful.

Compressing files
If you tend to keep very large files in your directory that are used infrequently, you may want to consider compressing them. This will free up disk space for other files and help you avoid exceeding your disk quota.

compress is a useful file compression utility that uses a Lempel-Ziv algorithm to compress a file by about 60%. Data files are usually good candidates for compress. When you wish to restore a file that has been compressed, use the companion utility uncompress.

To compress a file, adding the ".Z" prefix to the end of the filename:

world% compress large.txt

To uncompress the same file:

world% uncompress large.txt.Z

Alternatively, you could use the gzip command.

For example:
world% gzip shakespeare.complete

This will "zip" the shakespeare.complete file and rename it to shakespeare.complete.gz. Files compressed with gzip usually are renamed with a .Z, .z, or .gz suffix. To decompress a gzipped file, use the companion utility gunzip.

Viewing compressed files
You can read compressed ASCII text files on World without uncompressing them. Use the gzcat command to display a compressed file. Use the gzcat command to display a gzipped file.

Uncompressing on a Mac or PC
Compressed files can be uncompressed on a Mac or PC after downloading. This can save time during the download, as the compressed file will be smaller. Your Mac or PC will need the UNIX compress software. These programs can be found in the following directories on The World:

PC utilities: /sources/pc/archivers/gzip

Mac utilities: /sources/mac/archivers/stuffit/expander

If you are transferring compressed data, shut off the compression protocols for your modem to save time.

Downloading files and the /tmp area
It is likely that at some point you may want to download a file from a newsgroup, email, or a remote ftp site that is too large to be contained in your directory. If The World hasn't otherwise signalled that this is a problem while you are downloading a file, you may find once the transfer is done that the file you've downloaded is empty. Unless you are interested in purchasing more disk space to accomodate such situations, you can temporarily store the file in the /tmp area instead.

From pine, select the Export command option when viewing the message, then answer the prompt:

File (in home directory) to save message text in:

with /tmp/your_login_name/file.name

where file.name is a filename that you give it. Please be aware that this /tmp area is used by countless other customers so you should name your file with care so you can find it again later. Also, you are responsible for removing this file once your transfer is complete. Once your pine message has been exported to the /tmp area, simply designate the full pathname to the file in your download command:

For example:
world% sz -b /tmp/file.name

Files are automatically removed from the /tmp area after 24 hours.

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